Fail­ure to land one key player could cost Man Utd their man­ager

- Chelsea for­ward Al­varo Mo­rata may well have put his foot it in it again af­ter talk­ing about Real Madrid.

The £58mil­lion sum­mer sign­ing from Real last month said he could not see him­self stay­ing in Lon­don long-term and now the Spain for­ward has claimed a re­turn to the Span­ish cap­i­tal is in his think­ing.

Moata, 25, has been quoted on a Span­ish ra­dio show say­ing he would cer­tainly con­sider re­turn­ing to Real Madrid in the fu­ture.

When asked if he would re­turn to Madrid, he told El Lar­guero: “Of course I would re­turn. Af­ter win­ning ev­ery­thing at Chelsea and hav­ing a great ca­reer there, it’s very dif­fi­cult for one who is a madridista to say no.

“Sin­cerely, I don’t think that [will] hap­pen, but you never know. I don’t even con­sider it be­cause I am very happy in Lon­don.” The Spain in­ter­na­tional left Real Madrid for the sec­ond time in his ca­reer ear­lier this year when he joined Chelsea in a club-record deal.

Mo­rata ar­rived from Real Madrid in

LON­DON

Manch­ester United’s fail­ure to sign Ivan Perisic this sum­mer has been touted as just one ma­jor fac­tor be­hind Jose Mour­inho’s dis­con­tent at Old Traf­ford..

The Por­tuguese coach is ap­proach­ing the mid­point of the three-year deal he signed at United as Louis van Gaal’s suc­ces­sor, but talks are yet to be­gin over a new deal.

In re­cent weeks it has been claimed that PSG are plot­ting a sum­mer move to ap­point Mour­inho as their man­ager, with the United boss one of six can­di­dates to re­place Unai Emery, ac­cord­ing to a re­port.

And it’s sug­gested Mour­inho could be heav­ily tempted by the move to Paris af­ter be­com­ing frus­trated with United’s trans­fer poli­cies, sparked ini­tially by the fail­ure to land all four of his sum­mer tar­gets.

In­ter Mi­lan winger Perisic was one of four ma­jor tar­gets the Red Devils boss wanted in the sum­mer. While Vic­tor Lin­de­lof and Romelu Lukaku were brought in fairly quickly, Mour­inho was forced to wait longer than he’d hoped for to sign Ne­manja Matic from Chelsea, while he was left to­tally frus­trated over Perisic and United’s un­will­ing­ness to meet In­ter’s £50m ask­ing price.

United ex­ec­u­tive Vice-Chair­man Ed Wood­ward be­lieved In­ter would be forced to sell the winger for the ini­tial £37mil­lion United are thought to have of­fered due to fi­nan­cial fair play re­stric­tions. How­ever, the Serie A out­fit re­mained un­bowed and went on to pin the player down to an im­proved deal; thus dash­ing Mour­inho and United’s hopes.

Con­flict­ing re­ports on Mour­inho’s

MANCH­ESTER

the sum­mer as di­rect re­place­ment for Diego Costa and he has hit the ground run­ning with eight goals in 15 games for An­to­nio Conte’s men. He hit the head­lines last month though when he cast doubt on his long-term fu­ture in the cap­i­tal.

“I live in down­town Chelsea. Lon­don fas­ci­nates me with its multi-eth­nic­ity, the co­ex­is­tence of cul­tures and re­li­gions, but I do not see my­self liv­ing here for very long. Too much, too much stress, too many me­trop­o­lises,” Mo­rata told fu­ture also cast doubts over where the Por­tuguese coach’s fu­ture lies.

ESPN claims Mour­inho is se­ri­ously tempted by the chance to con­quer an­other league, es­pe­cially given Pep Guardi­ola and Manch­ester City look a se­ri­ous threat to his ti­tle hopes this sea­son. Sky Sports, how­ever, in­sist that United re­main re­laxed about the sit­u­a­tion and that Mour­inho is car­ry­ing on as nor­mal and plan­ning for a long-term fu­ture at Old Traf­ford. How­ever, Mour­inho’s ad­mis­sion over his United fu­ture last month points to his de­par­ture sooner or later. “I have my con­tract that ends in May/June 2019, we are in Oc­to­ber 2017, so I don’t know what to say,” Mour­inho said.

“One day you say I am go­ing to sign a five-year con­tract and the next day you say I am go­ing to leave.

“The only thing that I said and is true and there was not mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of my words is I am not go­ing to end my ca­reer at Manch­ester United.” Fur­ther­more, Mour­inho’s close friend­ship with PSG Sport­ing Di­rec­tor An­tero Hen­rique has been cited as the ‘ex­tra in­gre­di­ent’ needed to lure him from United.

How­ever, United’s big­gest threat could be mount­ing claims of ten­sion be­tween him­self and Wood­ward and his fail­ure to land all four of his tar­gets this sum­mer. Dun­can Cas­tles, a re­porter with the Sun­day Times and Daily Record, last month claimed United face the very real prospect of los­ing Mour­inho, cit­ing Wood­ward as the ma­jor fac­tor and pin­point­ing “un­nec­es­sar­ily bu­reau­cratic and in­ef­fi­cient or­gan­i­sa­tion at Old Traf­ford and United ‘s Car­ring­ton train­ing base”. Gazzetta dello Sport.

The for­ward, who had a spell at Ju­ven­tus be­fore re­turn­ing to Real last sum­mer, then claimed the com­ments were “a prob­lem of un­der­stand­ing”.